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And it is remarkable that Wordsworth, educated most negligently at Hawkshead school, subsequently by reading the lyric poetry of Horace, simply for his own delight as a student of composition, made himself a master of Latinity in its most difficult form; whilst Coleridge, trained regularly in a great Southern school, never carried his Latin to any classical polish.
The superb scenery through which we had been passing made what we now saw look tame, although a week ago we should have thought it more than commonly interesting. Hawkshead is the only village on our road, a small, whitewashed old town, with a whitewashed old Norman church, low, and with a low tower, on the same pattern with others that we have seen hereabouts.
Thoughts passed through her mind thoughts which shook her from head to foot. The cottage was now enlarged. Miss Mason, when she took it on lease three years before this date, had built two new rooms, or got the Hawkshead landlord to build them. She had retired now, on her savings; and there lived with her an old friend, a tired teacher like herself.
The time of my infancy and early boyhood was passed, partly at Cockermouth, and partly with my mother's parents at Penrith, where my mother, in the year 1778, died of a decline, brought on by a cold, in consequence of being put, at a friend's house in London, in what used to be called 'a best bedroom. My father never recovered his usual cheerfulness of mind after this loss, and died when I was in my fourteenth year, a schoolboy, just returned from Hawkshead, whither I had been sent with my elder brother Richard, in my ninth year."
His father was an attorney, and, as Lord Lonsdale's agent, a man of some means and position; but on his death in 1783 the eccentric and unamiable character of the then Lord Lonsdale, by delaying the settlement of accounts, put the family in considerable difficulties. Wordsworth, however, was thoroughly educated at Hawkshead Grammar School and St.
Hawkshead, 6 mo. 28, 1817. When I wrote thee last, my time and feelings would not permit me to say much on our impending prospect of leaving Barnsley; but since then this very important subject has obtained my most serious and weighty consideration, and I am now free to communicate to thee my feelings, in order that thou mayest weigh them duly and compare them with thy own while we are separated.
Miss Anna Mason, the head-mistress of an endowed girls school in Hawkshead, had come to spend a Saturday afternoon with her old pupil, Phoebe Fenwick. A masterful-looking woman ample in figure, with a mouth of decision. She wore a grey alpaca dress, adorned with a large tatted collar, made by herself, and fastened by a brooch containing a true-lover's knot in brown hair.
But Wordsworth's school-time was happy too. Hawkshead was among the beautiful lake and mountain scenery that he loved. He had a great deal of freedom, and out of school hours could take long rambles, day and night too. When moon and stars were shining he would wander among the hills until the spirit of the place laid hold of him, and he says
"She gave me eyes, she gave me ears; And humble cares, and delicate fears; A heart, the fountain of sweet tears; And love, and thought, and joy."* *The Sparrow's Nest. When the mother died these happy days for brother and sister together were done, for Willie went to school at Hawkshead with his brothers, and Dorothy was sent to live with her grandfather at Penrith.
His mother died when he was eight years old, and when his father followed her five years later, two of his uncles provided means for continuing at Cambridge the education which had been begun in the rural grammar-school of Hawkshead. It was in 1787 that he went up to St. John's College. He took his Bachelor's degree at the beginning of 1791, and there his connection with the university ended.
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